PRINCETON, N.J. — The Penn basketball team is making the miraculous — and the heartbreaking — routine.
Seventy-two hours after falling short in a double-overtime classic against Harvard, the Quakers suffered the same painful conclusion. This time, they faltered down the stretch to lose to rival Princeton, 62-59, in an intense, back-and-forth overtime affair.
“I guess tonight is a reflection of the past 222 games of this rivalry,” Penn coach Jerome Allen said.
The daunting deficit facing Penn at Jadwin Gymnasium this time around? A 53-42 hole with 4:26 remaining.
As has become the norm this season, the Quakers coolly erased it with tight defense and clutch threes.
“We’ve [shown] we can come back,” point guard Zack Rosen said. “When somebody hits us, we’ve got some fight. But we should be hitting first.”
The Red and Blue threw the first punches of overtime and seemingly had the Tigers knocked out. Then came the heartbreaking part.
With Penn up 59-58 and 16 seconds remaining, senior Jack Eggleston dove for a loose ball and called for a timeout. There was one problem: the Quakers had already expended their only overtime timeout.
Princeton junior guard Douglas Davis made Eggleston pay for the blunder by sinking the second of two free throws on the technical to knot the game at 59.
After a lengthy review of the play — also reminiscent of the Harvard game — the referees awarded Penn the ball with six seconds left on the shot clock.
But with a chance to go ahead, the Quakers instead continued to unravel.
Freshman Miles Cartwright, who struggled in a 4-for-13 shooting performance in front of a raucous crowd of 3,840, threw the inbounds pass directly into the hands of Princeton’s Ian Hummer. In the heat of the moment, Cartwright reacted by fouling the Tigers forward.
Another rookie gaffe soon followed. After Hummer’s foul shots put Princeton up two, Fran Dougherty missed a point-blank layup that would have tied the game with six seconds left.
The overtime collapse sent the Quakers home in dejected disbelief — a sharp contrast to the delight they had experienced at the end of regulation.
With Princeton up three and 3.6 seconds remaining in regulation, Allen turned to assistant Mike Martin to draw up the play of the year.
“I just gave him the board and said, ‘I trust you. Go ahead, get us a shot,’” Allen said. “It was an unbelievable play he drew up.”
The playcall sent all the Tigers to the near side of the court, in front of inbounder, Zack Gordon, perhaps with the thought that the ball would go to captains Eggleston or Rosen. Instead, guard Tyler Bernardini set a screen for Cartwright, then slipped free to the far corner, unguarded. Swish.
“It was probably the best play I’ve ever had drawn up for me. It was perfect,” said Bernardini, who led the team with 19 points, including 5-for-6 from deep. “I just had to do the easy part.”
About an hour after his brilliant play gave the Quakers hope, Martin sat by Bernardini near the Penn locker room with his head down, seemingly running through the nightmare that followed in his head.
“I mean, what do you even say?” Bernardini questioned.
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